Date of Award
2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
English
First Advisor
Jason Price
Second Advisor
Marie Balsley Taylor
Abstract
"This project analyzes how Eddie Chuculate's 2009 short story collection Cheyenne Madonna represents colonial impositions on Mvskoke and Black people, while also critiquing and deconstructing these impositions through various strategies employed by the characters. Be it children collaborating in a decolonial manner, or a man leaning on his Mvskoke traditions. This paper mainly uses a critical framework of Mvskoke literary symbolism (Womack) and a conception of radical Mvskoke sovereignty, termed este-cate (pronounced shta-kati) sovereignty (Laura Harjo). Following Daniel Heath Justice's writing on Native centered transnational critical theory, I too will draw on other frameworks, specifically with regards to racial subjectivities (Byrd and Wilderson) and settler colonial race construction (Wolfe).These non-Mvskoke critical sources and a history of Black slavery amongst the Mvskoke people will be used to situate the race structures and subjectivities latent in Blackness and Nativeness to best move towards a critique of settler colonial impositions. Then, I will move towards iterating how the characters, despite settler colonial impositions of racism, are able to lean on individual agency, community, and Mvskoke traditions to deconstruct the settler colonial ideologies they suffer under. The pubescent protagonists Jordan and YoYo form a decolonial bond that transcends settler-imposed racial antagonisms.
Recommended Citation
Simerly, Derrick, "Color, Blood, and Drink Decolonial Resistance in Eddie Chuculate’s Cheyenne Madonna" (2024). Theses. 7.
https://roar.una.edu/theses/7
